Wildly Appropriate

Cure For Yahoo! Peanutbutter Problems - Mash Thyself?

Nov 20, 09:31 AM

Brad Garlinghouse, a senior VP at Yahoo!, has said the following:

I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

I hate peanut butter. We all should.

Read/Write Web is predicting/hoping for the killing-off of the sundry Web 2.0 brands in Yahoo's stable in the wake of Garlinghouse's Peanut Butter Manifesto. And while I'd never presume to know stuff about running giant megabrands ... I think it's reasonable to want and expect the sub-brands to pipe some tangible benefits back into the Yahoo! umbrella brand. Does using del.icio.us feel Yahoo-ey? Other than being able to log in with your Yahoo! credentials, is there anything Flickrey in Yahoo! search or anything Yahoo! search-ey in Flickr? Maybe these mashup marvels need to start mashing incestuously with their sibling brands and with their parent instead of focusing on making it so gol-darn easy for every Tom, Dick and Harry to mash?